Playing to the Bear

In Playing to the Bear, exclusive for Kindle, the narrator finds herself standing with Jamie - her ex-boyfriend's stepdaughter - in the apartment she'd practically lived in so many years before. The apartment had very little furniture now, and the floors gleam unnaturally. Jamie, now a lovely young woman, had begged her to come because she wanted one of the adults in her life to tell her every secret, every subtext after the fact. She thought the filled-in knowledge would keep her standing, and able to decipher the real meaning of things. Then, Jamie began to take off her clothes.

Author Ann Beattie has been included in four O. Henry Award collections and John Updike's Best American Short Stories of the Century. She received the prestigious PEN/Malamud Award and the Rea Award for the Short Story. She has written seven novels and eight collections of stories and publishes frequently in The New Yorker. Scribner published her new book, Walks With Men, in June.